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Broken Pieces

Chapter Fourteen

By Roofles

The sound of the gunshot echoed around them as blood dripped from Barnes’s wrist from where Logan had shot him deep within The Burrows. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the small concrete room to their sensitive noses and Troy, the tiger, thrashed wildly like a madman in an electric chair. His bonds barely holding.

The tiger’s yowls increased as the first person moved after the moment of silence that followed that gunshot.

“DO it!” Barnes shouted as he turned towards the hidden passageway built throughout the underground like rabbit tunnels, making his retreat. Holding his bleeding wrist, the entire time, forgetting about everything and everyone else there.

At his words the other three hares jumped into action.

One of the guards lunged forward and, with a knife in hand, cut the tiger’s bonds free. Another of the guards stood before Domino and regretted his choices as the wolf pounced on him. Domino’s relentless, brutal blows filled the room. The last of the guards covered Barnes’s retreat and exited out of the same passageway they had entered from. The door closed behind them with a click and Logan slammed against the wall, unable to get it open from their side.

The wall was smooth to the touch and there weren’t any hidden panels. They were trapped in here with the tiger. Barnes willing to give up two hares in order to keep them preoccupied during his escape. As if mocking Logan.

He’d been a second too slow and now he lost them.

“Fuck!” Logan cursed as he hit the wall with the underside of his fist, trying to get it to open out of pure frustration. “He was right there!” Logan should’ve known that old bastard had a hand in this somehow.

Barnes always had some kind of dealings in the underworld of the city. A crotchety old hare to most, a cunning mastermind to others. Logan should’ve known better. He should’ve been better! He had let his personal issues get in the way and now his one lead had escaped.

He should’ve been more prepared, but he’d been caught off guard, yet again. He should’ve back then, with Milo. And now Barnes. Logan just continued to keep failing. To let these bastards escape. Any lives that would be lost would be on him.

It was his fault…

A horrifying scream filled the room pulling Logan out of his internal turmoil. He needed to survive this first before he’d deal with the ramifications. Before he could beat himself over it. To drink it all away…

Logan turned to see the guard who’d undone the tiger’s straps screaming bloody murder, a terrible sound that made Logan cover his ears as the prey species was attacked by a predator. The tiger, Troy, had latched onto his arm with his fangs and was trying to bite clean through.

Logan froze at the sight.

Blood dripping, the sound of the hare screaming, the tiger snarls as fangs flashed in the swinging light overhead as blood dripped from those bloody jaws. It wasn’t the act that shook Logan to his core. It were those stripes. Black stripes on orange fur as the light swayed back and forth above.

The look of it was horrifying sight brought it all back. To that place. Underground. Filled with hanging bodies. A butcher’s block. Milo. The tiger was there and he… Logan hadn’t…

It made the scars on his back burn fresh and hot as if they’d reopened.

“Always one step behind,” Logan could practically hear the words purr against his ears. Mocking him. Haunting him… no matter how much he tried to make them go away.

The hare pummeled the side of the tiger’s face with a closed fist, but it did little good to get it from letting go of his arm. There was so much blood. The sound of bone threatening to snap. A man’s screams that turned as animal as the thing on top of him was.

And those eyes….

The look in those eyes weren’t that of a sane man and the tiger’s pupils had contracted into sharp slits as his jaws bit down on the hare’s arm. The guard tried to claw his face with his other hand, but the tiger wouldn’t yield, and the snapping sound told them all that the tiger’s jaws had finally broken through bone.

The guard fell limp with shock as they Logan just watched. Watched, unable to lift a finger. Unable to save another life as he failed yet again.

“Logan!” Domino shouted and grabbed the human’s arm, pulling him towards the exit. “We need to go. Now! Everyone would’ve heard that sound.” Domino tried to explain. Explain that the sound of an injured prey species would alert everyone else in the area.

Normally, the others would run to save their own skin. In a burrow like this, they’d come seeking blood. Blood for blood, an eye for an eye. Domino knew it well how things went down. When one prey species was hurt, they’d all band together to get revenge. It wouldn’t matter if those caught in their path was the responsible party or not.

So long as they were predators they could blame.

Logan just stood there, staring until he felt the wolf drag him towards the exit. Domino was stronger than Logan was and half-dragged him towards the stairs they’d come down.

“Logan!” Domino yelled against his face and the human felt the wolf’s spittle, tinged with blood, land on his cheek.

“Right… right!” Logan shook his head. “Crystal,” he tried to grab the rabbit that Domino had knocked down the steps.

“No time!” Domino snarled, not about to risk their lives to say some rabbit. Some prey species. His blood was bumping, and his fangs bared from his lifted muzzle.

The sight of the tiger, another predator, feasting like that was making the wolf’s blood boil and every instinct in him was telling him to kill the tiger. Something Domino was struggling to keep under control; not wanting Logan, or anyone, to see what he, like so many other predator’s tried to hide each and every day of their lives.

The animal within.

Domino looked almost as feral as that tiger did as he pulled Logan along. The tiger that had pounced on the second guard who’d been trying to bang on the exit Barnes had retreated from, the one Domino had left to get Logan. He was desperately banging on the door, wanting to be let in. They’d been denied entrance.

“Sir. Sir! Please! I’m still in here!” They shouted and Logan had to turn away, knowing it was too late. Too late as the tiger turned on him.

Stalking towards him on all four like a feral animal, Troy pounced with claws extending. It was the last thing Logan saw before Domino hauled him up the steps.

“The fuck is happening?” Logan demanded to know as Domino took the steps three at a time. The horrible sound filled the room until only silence… The two stopped, looking back down to see a pair of glowing cat eyes staring up at them from the dark depths below.

Targeting them next.

“Fuck,” Domino was already pulling Logan away.

“Domino!” Logan tried to shout as he matched his steps the best he could. Humans were always at a disadvantage physically than several of the other species on the planet. “What was that? What was that drug they administered to him?”

“It’s not supposed to do that!” Domino gestured behind them before skidding to a halt and looking down three different hallways. “Fuck, I can’t remember which way I came from.” He cursed. Cursing rabbits and other burrowing species for their intricate tunnel systems they used to ward off enemies.

It had been an instinct from the ancestorial times that hadn’t gone away. Just like a wolf’s need for a pack, they, like all species, had their own baser instincts that they tried to hide and pretend not have. Pretend to be civilized. Some things, however, were so ingrained into who you were, what you were, that you could never fully get away from it and Domino was feeling it now.

Trapped.

Trapped in these tunnels. Underground, again. He was panting heavily, eyes wide as he stared down one hallway and then down another. Every hallway looked exactly the same. The same carpet, the same paint on the walls, the same number of lights and doors and, and, and…

“Domino!” Logan had to slap the wolf out of it, and he turned towards the human with a growl. “Not. Now!” Logan just stared into his eyes, holding the side of his muzzle, until the wolf backed down. At least some things never changed.

Domino was a follower in the end. Something Logan had always taken advantage of…

He might be pushing seven feet of pure muscle and fur but in the end, Domino was still a wolf that needed to follow a pack mentality. To be lead where to go. Told what to do. It was who and what he was. Logan, somehow, was above him on the pack hierarchy and when things got real, like this, the wolf, and wolves, would instinctually obey those above them.

It was for their very survival and how wolves had lasted this long. Despite all the time, throughout the years, they had been targeted for extinction.

“Now. Tell me what the fuck is going on. I can’t know what to do if I don’t understand what happened back there,” Logan grabbed hold of his arm, tugging him in a direction.

“D-do you know the way out…?” Domino’s voice was meek, softer than it usually was as he kept his head bowed. Ashamed. Ashamed he had acted like that in front of Logan, again. To be the animal that they were.

Nothing but instinct driven by their ancestral roots.

“I had an idea,” Logan pointed out a spot on the wall.

When he’d followed after the others earlier, he’d cut himself. The smell of his blood had helped Domino track down his location, sure. But Logan had left these bread crumps of blood behind to find his way out. Making sure to have a means of escape was rule one when entering into hostile territory. Just like Theseus entering the labyrinth, Logan had left himself a means of escape.

It wasn’t as thorough as a ball of yarn would’ve been, but Logan made do. Their pace was slowed as they stopped in each junction of hallways, like an intersection, to find the right one to take to head towards the way they’d come.

“Primal,” Domino began, and Logan glanced over at him. “Is a street drug. We just don’t like to talk about it…”

“Explain. I’m not part of the narcotics unit in the city. I’ve had to deal with druggies, sure, who hasn’t, right?” Logan laughed lightly as he stopped again to check for the spot of blood. Of course, Domino found it first and the two quickly headed down the hallway.

“Primal is a street drug that is predominantly used by… predators.” Domino frowned, ears folding back. The wolf fiddled with his hands, tail tucking as he grumbled about it. “And no!” He snapped as Logan gave him a look. “I have never tried the stuff. Or ever wanted to. It’s for the weaker species,” he sneered. “Wolves don’t take performance enhancing drugs like P.”

“Performance enhancing?” Logan paused at that, thinking it over.

“It’s a drug that makes us… return to our roots, or some bullshit.” Domino shook his head. “I know Vicky was taking it after she lost her mate. It helped her… cope. Said it made her feel alive again. The side effects are brutal and aren’t worth the high. Some preds, though. They need it. To… to cope. With it all. It’s hard to explain to a…” Domino glanced at Logan, unable to finish.

“To a human?” Logan rolled his eyes. “Try.” He ordered and Domino did.

“It’s like there’s another… you, inside. Always there. Like a passenger in the seat next to you. The thing looking back at you in the mirror… a you that you pretend not to be, to acknowledge. Predators… or even the prey species, we all have it. That… animal, inside. It can make it hard to focus or concentrate at times… to go against what we are…” Domino frowned. “Smells trigger it a lot for canines. Brings us back. Our olfactory is far stronger than a lot of other species and it’s one of the few… pleasures, we allow ourselves to partake in.”

It wasn’t a topic they openly talked about. A topic no one wanted to bring up, as if they didn’t talk about it then it didn’t truly exist. Domino had heard that some coped with it better than others. Some… some couldn’t and were even sheltered by their families. Away from the public eye, afraid what they might do to them.

What kind of danger they could bring back to the pack. They were often weeded out. Those who were seen as “defective” and unable to be part of society. Those that were more animal than man, unable to hide it like others could. Like Domino tried to do.

“Like a voice?” Logan was still confused on it.

“No, no. More like a… feeling. A gut feeling. You know when you get really horny?” Domino said in example and Logan gave him a look. The wolf smirked. “Like really, really horny and you’d do just about anything to get off…?”

“Yeah…?” Logan frowned, unsure where this was going.

“It’s like that. An urge, inside, that you want to sate and feed… but apply that to other things in life. Everything in life. Territory, mates, power, position in a pack… Wanting to be seen with respect, to be top dog. That strange need birds have to roost somewhere high above the ground, or these bastards needing to burrow underneath the ground or, like, an otters need to swim. I heard a lot of the aquatic species will go bat-shit insane if they can’t swim!” Domino laughed at the idea.

Find some amusement in the dark topic.

“I’ve read case studies of that.” Logan nodded, putting things together. “A beaver wasn’t allowed to swim or be around water in over a year. His mind kind of… snapped. Broke. When they introduced him back to running water. He went… feral.” Logan hated to use the f word.

Scientifically speaking that wasn’t the word they had used, or any reputable source would say. The word was taboo in the science community because of the negative stigma and biased attached to it. It was what the media said. What politicians said. What society and social media said about those who couldn’t cope with being “normal.” The F word was thrown around whenever a predator stepped out of line or did something seen as abnormal, unacceptable.

A reason to send them to prison or the electric chair.

“And this, uh, drug, Primal, makes you turn… feral?” Logan frowned unsure how to deal with that. It was difficult enough to deal with a tiger, or a wolf, when they weren’t drugged up out of their freaking mind like that.

A feral wild animal…?

Logan wasn’t sure what to do about that other than just… shoot them. Shoot until they stopped moving. As if they were nothing but an… an animal.

It was what the other police officers, the human police officers, like to say when they put down a suspect. Shoot first and never ask questions. For the good of society, to keep the peace in our already tumultuous world.

“Something like that. It isn’t supposed to be that strong,” Domino thumbed over one shoulder. “We regulate it and control the substance one uses. Primal is usually used as a, uh, sex drug. Makes you go wild in the bedroom,” he snorted before shaking his head. “These bastards must’ve spiked the drug with something else. To make that cat turn out like that.” Domino snarled. “Unleash something like that in public? All the progress carnivores have made in the past thirty years will go down the drain.”

“Right.” Logan nodded, thinking it over. That was a simple, yet brilliant idea. It was so easy to turn the public view on a carnivore. They were already hated by the majority of the population. Turn them into the monster the media claimed them to be, and the job practically does itself.

It would be something Barnes would do. That old hare only played at being the feeble, weak, injured hare. Wearing the perfect mask to hide his intentions. Something Logan was intimately familiar with. Not just because he was a herbivore and prey species, no. Barnes was a sick man that loved to toy and play with those on the other side of the society.

Just as Logan did. Cut from the same cloth, the two of them.

It was one reason why Barnes and Logan had originally gotten along so well together. The two had their own hate for predators and, at the same time, love for them. A sick fascination. A dangerous game. Wanting to be around them but be the one in control.

Drugging some stupid college kid into being a feral-minded monster was exactly something up Barnes modus operandi, or M.O.

It was exactly why Logan knew to come here in the first place. He’d barked up the right tree but had gotten a lot more than he’d been planning for in return.

“Do… do humans not have that?” Domino was the one to stop this time, waiting for Logan to look at him.

“Have what?” Logan quirked an eyebrow, confused where he was going with this.

“…Urges.” Domino didn’t meet his eyes. The wolf’s ears were folded back.

“Well, sure.” Logan shrugged but took another second. “I don’t think… our urges are like yours though, Dom. We get horny, we get mad or greedy or envious, sure. But there are few cases of people… like that.” Logan bit his bottom lip, unable to meet his eyes.

There were so many things going through his mind right now, it was hard to focus. One thing stuck out above everything else.

“That’s just how they are, Logan…”

Why was he thinking of his Aunt right now? Her words kept coming to them. Warning him. After what happened to his brother, his parents hadn’t been there. They couldn’t handle the trauma of it all. His aunt had taken Logan in, and she had told him so much…

Told him how the real-world works. The world that has always been there, behind the wool cast over your eyes. She had been the one to finish pulling that wool away; after what Mikail had done to his brother, Logan was on a precipice, and she’d been the one to help him cross to the other side safely.

“Their driven by an unseen force, Logan.” She’d purred into his ear as if she were a feline, holding his shoulders so he couldn’t look away from the things she’d showed him. The things you could only find on the dark web. “They aren’t like us. They can so easily fall to these… desires. But, they can also be lead. Lead like a bear to honey,” she teased but Logan found no humor in it. “If you give with one hand, you can take with the other when they aren’t looking. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Aunty. I understand…” Logan had just graduated high school and there he stood on that ravine, looking down at the things he’d so willingly ignored. Ignored until his back was clawed, his brother was killed, and his Aunt showed him the way.

“Logan…?” Domino asked and he looked at him.

“Humans have control… in our desires...” Logan paused, needing to think how to word it. “We like to claim that above everyone else, we have more control of ourselves than others. It’s a lie. We’re animals in the end. Like everyone else. We just like to pretend we’re better. It’s just…” Logan looked back down the hallway they’d come. “At times. It’s hard to see that difference…”

Domino’s ears splayed out as he looked down at his feet. Feet that were wearing shoes a size too small. They hurt his feet. These shoes. How Domino would love to tear them off, toss them aside and let his toes breathe! To feel the ground beneath his paw pads, to feel the grass in his toes. A side of himself, like every wolf, he kept hidden and locked away for fear of the judgement they’d get from others in return for…

For being themselves.

“I want to.” Logan voice ached as he said the words. He covered his mouth, turning away. “I want to see things different. Like Alan does. How can he do that…? Not how things are but how I want them to be… to wear rose tinted glasses and be able to smile, again. Like he does. How can he be… happy? I don’t get it, I don’t understand… No matter how many times I,” sleep with, “one of you… I just. Can’t…”

“You smile all the time.” Domino took a hesitant step forward and Logan looked at him with nothing but pain in his eyes.

“Dom. I haven’t smiled since my brother died.” Logan admitted and the wolf wasn’t sure what to say to that. “This?” He smiled and Domino would’ve sworn it was genuine. “Is nothing. It’s fake. Empty. Like I am.” Logan touched his face as if to make sure his muscles were working properly. “How can I smile when he’s not here? When my brother can’t come to my birthday. I can’t scold him about the girl he’s begun dating… I can’t do anything. He’s gone and I’m responsible for it…”

Logan cursed, gritting his teeth to the point his gums were about to bleed.

“Logan…” Domino reached out, but Logan was just out reach from his hand. He couldn’t help even if he so desperately wanted to do so.

“When I find Mikhail… I don’t know what I’ll do.” Logan stared down a hallway, a loss for words. “What would he have done…? Wanted me to do? After it all comes to an end…? If I find Mikhail and this, everything I’ve done comes to an end…? Then what will there be left of me?”

Logan looked down at his hands.

“I’ve killed so many.” Logan laughed but there was no humor in it. “Does that make me a bad person?” He asked Domino, as if the wolf would be the only one to understand such a question. Understand how bloody his hands felt every morning, no matter how much he tried to scrub and wash them off. “Is this how it works? Are we just… broken in the end? And there’s nothing left we can do…? I just. I just want to be happy…”

“I…” Domino gritted his teeth, fists clenching painfully tight at his side as his shoulder shook. It looked like he was about to punch the human and Logan would’ve let him.

At least pain was something Logan could understand, and he was expecting it. No, he was hoping for it. It was one of the few things that made him feel like he was still… alive at the end of the day. Pain was an ironically painful reminder that you were alive.

Just like Primal must’ve done for certain predators out there.

“The only way to feel alive…” Logan let the breath he’d been holding out, about to proceed forward. Where that led him? He wasn’t sure.

“You saved my life!” Domino shouted, his voice turning into a vicious snarl at the end. “That… that can’t mean nothing! My life can’t have been for nothing.”

“What…?” Logan was at a loss.

“My life!” Domino slapped his chest with a hand, growling at the human as he glared at the man. “My existence. Who I am! What I am! I matter. I must. I must mean something…” Logan wasn’t sure if Domino was asking if he meant something to Logan or if it was a misplaced kind of love that he felt for the man who’d saved his life… “I’m not just instinct or urges or…”

“Domino,” Logan sighed, turning to face towards him.

“My life mattered enough for you to save. Even if you don’t value your own life, at least respect me about it when I say I do. I do value you, Logan.” Domino huffed and panted, getting worked up from it all. “I don’t want to take Primal!” He growled and Logan lifted an eyebrow. Is that what had triggered this sudden outburst from the wolf? “I want to feel how I want to feel not how some drug makes me feel. I’m more than that. I’m more than him!” He jabbed a clawed finger down the hallway they’d come from. “We’re not all like that, Logan.”

“I know.” Logan did smile then and it felt, if only for the briefest of seconds, that it was genuine. “That’s why I saved you, Dom. I know you are… incredible. Wonderful. Great. More than what others chose you to be. You are your own person, Dom. And I respect that about you enough to save,” hurt myself for, “you.”

Logan smiled and it was the masked he liked to wear. Some words, he wouldn’t say aloud. Not even wanting his own ears to hear them. How many times he toyed with the idea of adding new scars to his body.

“Right. Right!” Domino huffed, shaking his head. “Sorry. Just. The blood,” he covered his nose with a hand. He sniffed it and growled. “This is why I wear gloves. I can at least take them off after. Drives me crazy…”

“The blood?” Logan asked and the wolf looked at him. “Does that trigger your… uh, urges?”

Domino just looked at him, as if trying to see behind the perfect mask Logan had put on. A blank look with caring eyes and a smile tugging up at one corner of his lip. A mask that told Domino it would be okay to tell him these things.

Logan needed to know them.

“Yes…” Domino swallowed, not wanting to say how much it made him drool. The smell of the hare’s blood in that enclosed room. The smell of fear mixed with the excitement of that tiger. It had almost been overpowering, like a drug, and Domino had escaped from that room for his own sake as well as Logan’s.

“I see…” Logan took a second before motioning for them to continue after they caught their breath. “Smell is that powerful for wolves?”

“For all canines, I’d imagine.” Domino shrugged his heavy shoulders. “There are a lot of other species out there that have better sense of smell than we do. It just helps drives canines, is all. We use it more than just for tracking food, uh… I mean back in the dark ages.”

Logan nodded as Domino followed behind.

“We use smell for mating, for kinship, exchanging scents and rubbing ourselves on each other…” Domino’s ears folded back and he blushed underneath his dark brown fur. “It’s a comfort, in our dark times… I have one of your old shirts in my room, still.”

Logan glanced over at him, and Domino growled.

“Don’t make it weird!” Domino warned and Logan held up his hands. “I have one of Clem as well. He has his own collection as well, I’m sure. Canines always keep… souvenirs of those we’ve been with and liked. As a reminder. The smell triggers memories and it helps us… when we need it most.”

“I’ll have to give you my underwear after all this,” Logan teased, and Domino rolled his eyes.

“I don’t want to remember this hell.” Domino snorted at the idea. Logan noted how the wolf hadn’t declined his underwear for other things though.

“You are so funny, Dom.” Logan actually laughed, and it took even him off guard from the sound. “I’m so glad I met you.” Domino’s ears splayed out. “I’d be dead by now as well, without you. You know that?”

Domino gave him a sideways glance, intently listening to his words.

“All I’m saying is I’m glad you are here. Okay, enough. Enough already! I’m sick of all these feelings.” Logan shook his hands of it. “I’m grateful, you’re grateful. Friendship is magic bullshit. Let’s just get out of here before,” and then Domino’s ears perked up and Logan caught the look on the wolf’s face as he glanced back. “What is it…?”

“We’re being stalked…” The wolf growled low, and Logan nodded, quickening his pace as the two tried to get out of here as an flash of orange fur passed in a hallway behind them.